Peach Ice-Cream

What do you do in hot weather, with a punnet of peaches that need to be eaten right now? A whole punnet being too many to eat, I made peach ice cream.
The recipe starts from my trusty cornstarch base. I usually make it with cream, but this time it was just milk (as I didn't have any cream in the fridge). Made the base a bit thicker than usual (slightly higher proportion of cornstarch to liquid), to allow for the fact that the peaches would thin it again slightly. It wasn't quite frozen when we had some, but I think the texture will turn out somewhere between ice-cream and sorbet. I don't think it was peachy enough, but Duncan said it was fine. If I try this again, I'll possibly add another peach, and maybe a few raspberries.

Peach Ice-Cream
300ml + 50ml milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp vanilla
Dash lime juice
2 peaches, peeled and pureed
1 peach, peeled and chopped small

Put the 300ml milk and sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix the cornstarch with the remaining 50 ml milk.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
Reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from the heat (I pour into a jug, for easier handling later) and leave to cool slightly.
Add the lime juice to the peach puree, then add this to the base. Mix thoroughly, then add the chopped peaches.
From here, follow your preferred freezing method - I transfer to my ice-cream maker, churn until mostly frozen, then transfer to a freezer box and freeze until set.

Three Chimneys: Pears Poached in Green Ginger Wine

Served with a hot chocolate sauce. Required the purchase of a bottle of green ginger wine. After poaching and eating the pears, I wondered what to do with the leftover liquid. Put it back in the pan and simmered it down until very syrupy, then bottled it. Makes a good hot drink, diluted with some hot water.

Three Chimneys: Autumn Pudding

This didn't quite work out. I think there were a number of reasons
- I didn't use enough syrup in the pudding
- The bread was thick sliced
- There was too much bread for the amount of fruit I could fit in the ramekins I used

Still, it tasted good. I'll have to try these again.

Rock Buns/Honey Rhubarb Muffins

Well, last weeks lemon biscotti seemed to go down well. Duncan took them to work, not realising I had plans for some of them. Luckily, he managed to rescue the half dozen I wanted to take to my dad.
A double baking session this week. I picked up some rhubarb on Saturday, and found an interesting sounding recipe for honey rhubarb muffins in one of my cookbooks; A Cook's Tour of Scotland by Sue Lawrence. However, since they contain fresh fruit, they won't last more than a couple of days. So I needed to make something else that would last a bit longer.
Browsing through one of my other books (Low-Fat Baking by Linda Fraser), I found something which I thought might turn out either pretty good, or absolutely awful: rock buns. Not something I remember having made before, so I had to have a go.
Both recipes seem to have turned out not too badly for the first try. I'm a bit disappointed with the muffins; they taste great, but seem to have fallen a bit flat. I did notice that the baking temperature was a bit higher than I'd normally expect for a muffin. Might try changing it next time. With the rock buns, I used different fruit; the recipe called for prunes and mixed peel, but I used dried apricots and cherries instead. The amount of liquid called for in the recipe also seems to make too dry a dough; I think I'll add a bit more milk next time.

Recipe: Honey Rhubarb Muffins
200 grams flour, self-raising
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50 grams hazelnuts -- chopped and toasted
50 grams sugar, light muscovado
4 tablespoons honey
100 millilitres sunflower oil
100 millilitres yoghurt, skim milk
100 grams rhubarb -- finely diced

Preheat the oven to 200C. Put 10 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together into a large bowl. Stir in the hazelnuts.
In a jug, whisk together the yogurt, oil, honey and sugar.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients, and stir briefly. Add the rhubarb and stir until combined.
Divide between the muffin cases. Bake for around 20 minutes until risen and golden.
Best eaten warm.


Recipe: Rock Buns
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 ounces dried cherries -- chopped
2 ounces dried apricots -- chopped
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup sunflower oil
5 tablespoons skim milk

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
Sift together the flour and baking powder.
Stir in the fruit and lemon zest.
Mix together the milk and oil. Stir into the flour mixture to make a dough - it should just bind together.
Place spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Cookies

This is the first recipe tried from a new book - One Smart Cookie. It's a low-fat baking book, but not one full of strange ingredients, or recipes you wouldn't want to eat. It also doesn't use artificial replacements for normal ingredients; if you want sugar, you have sugar, not some chemical replacement. My only problem with the book - and it's not a big one - is that being an American/Canadian book, all of the measurements are in cups. Being British, I'm more used to grams/ounces.
Anyway, the recipe I tried was Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Chews. I made a small change to it - not having molasses, I used a mixture of golden syrup and black treacle. Not sure if I got the proportions quite right; I'll have to wait until I get comments from others who try the cookies.

Recipe:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup black treacle
1 large egg
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175C. Line some baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg, then the the golden syrup and treacle. Mix thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the dry ingredient mixture, a couple of tablespoons at a time, to the wet ingredients. Stir between each addition to ensure everything is well combined.
Drop large spoonfuls (level tablespoons/heaped dessertspoons) of the mixture onto the baking sheets, making sure they have room to spread. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until set.
Unless you have a large oven, you'll probably have to bake these in multiple batches.